The Socio-Cultural Costs of Pursuing Higher Education for Women in Haiti

Education is believed to have equalizing potential that will increase women’s access to the labor market, including decision-making positions that will create opportunities to impact policy and legislation. Initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All have focused on gender parity with the aim of working toward equality. However, higher education institutions (HEIs) function within a variety of sociocultural contexts in which phallocentric norms define women’s positionality and female students’ vulnerability within them. Embedded in various forms of patriarchal structures, HEIs encode multilayered power differentials between administrators/instructors and students and enact gender biases which often lead to their sexual harassment and exploitation at the very sites entrusted with their empowerment. The lines between consensual relationships and sexual exploitation are blurred for young women in university contexts, particularly in countries such as Haiti where there is no preexisting legal framework to deter sexual harassment and exploitation. This study examines the lived experiences of female university students who, consistent with human rights discourses, embark on a quest for equality and social justice through educational attainment while negotiating cultural contexts that resist such ideals. ,